Joseph McBrennan, editor of Taipan Publishing Group, believes ‘the current budget reductions are a joke. There is no other option than to take a meat cleaver to every program and slash if the United States is to survive. Everything should be on the table for elimination. Nothing should be spared.’
For starters he takes on DARE, a program in which police officers teach school children about drug abuse. I felt that this program was a waste of time long before the ‘experts’ started to question its effectiveness in preventing kids from turning to drugs. I suspect that my friend Greg, a Houston PD DARE officer before he got promoted, will disagree with me and with McBrennan.
McBrennan says that if parents would simply not allow their children to attend any DARE classes, this worthless and wasteful program would soon disappear. Here are some excerpts from McBrennan’s article:
MY PERSONAL WAR ON DRUGS
by Joseph McBrennan
Taipan Daily
April 7, 2011
Today I'll ask you to join me in my long-standing feud with Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE).
My fight started innocently enough when my daughter, attending a private Catholic elementary school, came home and announced that my wife and I were "drug addicts."
The drug she was referring to was beer. She had learned from the DARE officer that alcohol was considered a drug, and anyone that consumed more than two beers an evening was addicted. Being a three-pint man, it was clear I was guilty as charged.
My 11-year-old went on to explain that the DARE instructor, along with everyone in class, was aghast to find out that not only did I make my own beer, but I had taught each of my five children exactly how to do it. (Get the rope!)
(Did I mention that the DARE officer was a pregnant, unmarried policewoman? No, of course I didn't. That would be considered judgmental. Ignore that I mentioned it. )
This was the role model the city had decided would be best suited to teach these young, heads-filled-with-putty fifth graders the difference between right and wrong.
Not wanting to appear rash before calling the school, I thought I had better do some research. It wasn't hard. Google provided more than 63 million hits. The research has shown, time and time again, that DARE is an ineffective government program (sorry, that's redundant). Yet it is currently being taught to 36 million children annually, and is now in 54 countries other than the United States.
Even the United States General Accounting Office said the program had "no statistically significant long-term effect on preventing youth illicit drug use."
It is always nice to have the accountants in your corner, but when even a government agency that literally has mastered the craft of wasteful spending turn its nose up at this program, you've really accomplished something. My best source comes from none other than the U.S. Department of Education.
The U.S. DOE refuses to allow any federal education funds to be spent on the DARE program because the program is completely ineffective in curbing alcohol or drug abuse.
The single reason advocates site for the success of DARE is that participants say they like it. In other words, if it feels good it must be successful. The proof they point to is that teachers (who get the 17 hours of DARE instruction off), students (who are not graded on any of the work) and parents (who have no contact with any of it) say they enjoyed the program.
Hmmm. Sounds a lot like recess. Who wouldn't like an extra paid hour of fun?
Defenders will point out that the theories on which DARE is based were developed by world renowned psychologists Bill Coulson, Carl Rodgers and Abraham Maslow.
And, to their credit, Maslow and Rogers admitted that their theories were wrong. Dr. Coulson simply said that the program "is rooted in trash psychology."
So why can we not drive a stake through the heart of this program? Ronald Reagan said it best when he said, "The closest thing to immortality is a government program." (That quote was borrowed from Senator James F. Byrnes, 1933).
DARE has taken on a life of its own. It is estimated to suck out nearly $750 million of taxpayer dollars. This is without calculating the local taxes that are thrown at this feel-good program, which pushes it over the billion-dollar mark.
If we all refuse to allow our children to attend DARE, the program will come to an immediate end. It's a very simple step of telling the government "no."
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